The Woodlanders was first published in Macmillan's Magazine between May 1886 and April 1887 and in Harper's Bazaar from 15th May 1886 to 9th April 1887. A three-volume edition was published by Macmillan in 1887; this was followed by a one-volume edition and a Colonial edition, both by Macmillan, in the same year.
The first, three-volume edition of 1887
My copy is the one-volume edition, reprinted in 1889.
The 1889 edition
Within the first forty pages, five of the six main characters in the story have been introduced:
Marty South, whose face had the usual fulness of expression which is developed by a life of solitude...in years she was no more than nineteen or twenty, but the necessity of taking thought at too early a period of life had forced the provisional curves of her childhood's face to a premature finality. Thus she had but little pretension to beauty, save in one prominent particular - her hair.
George Melbury, was a thin, slightly stooping figure, with a small, nervous mouth who has created his own 'cross to bear' - educating his daughter for greater things than the promised betrothal to the 'woodlander' Giles can provide; later he muses to his (second) wife I know Grace will gradually sink down to our level again, and catch our manners and way of speaking, and feel a drowsy content in being Giles's wife.
Giles Winterborne a man, not particularly young for a lover, nor particularly mature for a person of affairs...there was reserve in his glance, and restraint upon his mouth...
Grace Melbury in simple corporeal presentment she was of a fair and clear complexion, rather pale than pink, slim in build and elastic in movement. Her look expressed a tendency to wait for others' thoughts before uttering her own: possibly also to wait for others' deeds before her own doing
Mrs Charmond first seen by Marty in her carriage where a pair of bright eyes looked from a ripe handsome face, and though behind those bright eyes was a mind of unfathomed mysteries, between them there beat a heart capable of quick, extempore warmth - a heart which could indeed be passionately and imprudently warm on certain occasions.
That first meeting between Marty and Felice Charmond, leads the latter's coachman to comment that as a rule she takes no interest in the village folk at all. When Giles and Grace catch up with Mrs Charmond's coach, Hardy wryly comments, thus these people with converging destinies went along the road together.
Edred Fitzpiers is called to pronounce on Marty's ill father - Fitzpiers was, on the whole, a finely formed handsome man...his face was rather soft than stern, charming than grand, pale than flushed
Not surprisingly, with a title such as The Woodlanders, trees play an integral part in the story.
The tall elm outside his house, which Marty's father thinks will blow down and kill them - it got too big, and now 'tis my enemy, and will be the death of me - Marty tells Fitzpiers the shape of it seems to haunt him like an evil spirit. He says that it is exactly his own age, that it has got human sense, and sprouted up when he was born on purpose to rule him, and keep him as its slave. When Fitzpiers orders it to be cut down, and two woodmen do this, it finishes old South - a bluish whiteness overspread him and he died the same evening. The outsider, Fitzpiers, had hastened his end; and, in doing so, had led to Winterborne losing his lifeholds. During the storm which leads to Winterborne's death, the trees are sinister: Dead boughs were scattered about like ichthyosauri in a museum...more trees, in jackets of lichen and stockings of moss...(other) trees close together, wrestling for existence, their branches disfigured with wounds resulting from their mutual rubbings and blows...beneath them were the rotting stumps of those of the group bthat had been vanquished long ago, rising from their mossy setting like black teeth from green gums...and under the temporary shelter of hurdles, lay Giles. The tragedy is that Giles and Marty were both skilled in woodcraft, in copse work and in planting. Marty promises, over Giles's grave, whenever I plant the young larches I'll think that none can plant as you planted...
The growth of the mutual interest that develops between Fitzpiers and Grace is compared with that of twigs budding on the trees. When Grace and her father, neither able to sleep due to Fitzpiers's gallivanting off to see Mrs Charmond, meet up, they halt beneath a half-dead oak, its roots spreading out like claws grasping the ground. So like the half-dead marriage of Grace and Fitzpiers. When Melbury, having lost faith in his own judgement and needing a genuine friend, sets out to find Winterbourne he passes through the woods which seemed to be in a cold sweat; beads of perspiration hung from every bear twig; the sky had no colour, and the trees rose before him as haggard, grey phantoms, whose days of substantiality were passed. How like the man himself. E. M. Forster wrote: English trees! How that book rustles with them.
Mrs Charmont, typically, dislikes the woods. When Grace confronts her about her dalliance with her husband, their long argument takes them into the wildest part - old trees which were once landmarks had been felled or blown down, and the bushes which had been small and scrubby were now large and overhanging. It is Grace, not the outsider Charmont, who eventually finds a way out, but not for some time. Grammer Oliver accurately sums up Felice Charmont: she's the wrong sort of woman for Hintock - hardly knowing a beech from a woak.
Piers is attracted by and attracts three strongly contrasted females. A critic, Trevor Johnson, contends that Felice stands for the wild, irrational, neck-or-nothing kind, Suke for plain physical lust, and Grace for a mixture of calculation, fascination and idealisation.
Put simply, Marty and Giles stand for dignity and integrity, whilst Grace, in the end, lacks both; and Piers is just a cad.
The Woodlanders was, apparently, one of Hardy's favourite books. He is quoted: On taking up The Woodlanders and reading it after many years, I like it as a story best of all. Perhaps that is owing to the locality and scenery of the action.
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Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Only now do I turn to Claire Tomalin's superb Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man (Viking, 2006), to read her comments on The Woodlanders. She write that it is like a black version of Far from the Madding Crowd. This time the good man dies needlessly, and the bad man wins his woman and keeps her in spite of his blatant infidelities. All the women are humiliated, suffer and end in sorrow.
The three novels Hardy published between 1887 and 1895 - The Woodlanders, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure were powerful, bleak and sometimes savage in their representation of human experience. I studied Tess for 'A' Level and, in my macho teenage years, the bleakness had minimal effect! I don't want to read either of the last two books again, though. I will, however, read Under the Greenwood Tree for the umpteenth time - it is perhaps my favourite Hardy.
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